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Monday, December 08, 2014

Knitting in the Face of Temptation

Now that my gift knitting is done, I've turned my attention back to knitting for me, at least for the time being. I'm waiting for some yarn support to arrive for a commission (shhh! it's a secret!), but until then I am trucking along on my Coaxial Hat. I was very good and got in a couple more repeats on it on Saturday while I was at my LYS, and I believe I have only one more repeat left to go before I start decreasing for the crown.

As much as I'm enjoying the pattern, the knitting itself is not all that enjoyable because it's rather hard on my hands. The yarn, being handspun, is a bit denser than most commercial yarn. Add to that the fact that the stitch pattern has lots of slipped stitches and you get a very dense fabric. This hat will probably stand up on its own when I'm done (though I'm hoping blocking will help some). I know I'll be happy with it, but I need to knit it in relatively short knitting sessions. As it's for me, there's no real deadline, though I'd like to have it done before the end of the Gift-a-long -- and, unless I want to pack it, I really should have it done by the end of next week before we go to Florida for two weeks.

The real trouble with the hat is that I would rather knit on my cowl. And really, can you blame me? It's Pashmina! This yarn is so soft and smooth and enjoyable to knit with, and it's a really nice treat for my hands after they get all achy knitting on the hat. I gave it some attention over the weekend as well and got through a repeat and a half of the lace.

I worked on this last night, after taking the photo, and have now made it my lunchtime knitting project. Unfortunately, I had a slight mishap with my needle at the end of today's lunchtime knitting session, and I can honestly say that I've never had this happen before with these needles (ChiaoGoo Red Lace) -- the cable just snapped off of the needle tip!

Luckily, I was able to grab the stitches and get them back onto the cable (not very neatly, but well enough), and this evening I'll transfer all of them to a new needle so that the cowl can go on. I'm hoping to finish it before the trip as well -- my plan was to take all new things to knit while I'm on vacation. I already have some self-striping sock yarn wound and ready to go, but I need to decide on some other projects. Deciding what knitting to take is almost harder than packing my clothes!